Birth Story

At about 5:30 p.m. on the day I gave birth to Miles I had a small meltdown. My epidural no longer seemed to be working and my contractions were becoming painful again, but the meltdown was not really about the pain. Because the baby was coming early, and because his heart rate was dropping a little each time I had a contraction, I had spent the day confined to a bed, unable to walk or sit up, or even shift my position without help. I was hooked up to external monitors, internal monitors, an epidural, a catheter, an oxygen mask and an IV, and the last two times the nurse had checked I was only dilated to 4.5 cm. As my pain level crept back up, I couldn't help but think that it would only get worse, and that I still had hours ahead of me. I was scared because I had never done this before. I didn't know what to expect, and I didn't know if I could make it. And so, ten hours after we'd first arrived at the hospital, I broke. I started sobbing, and Brian held me and just listened patiently as I tried, somewhat incoherently, to express what I was thinking and feeling. "Do you want me to get the nurse?" he asked, and I kept saying no, and finally he said, "I'm going to get the nurse," and I said okay.

I knew that this baby was going to come early. I said many times to many people that I had the feeling he wouldn't wait until his due date, and I always qualified this statement with the possibility that it was wishful thinking more than mother's intuition. But I kind of thought it was mother's intuition. Around the time that classes ended for the semester, I began to worry that "early" might end up being much earlier than a few days before the due date. I started poring over internet articles about the process of giving birth, and I sent Brian an email labeled "just in case" with pdf files of all my finals so that he could send them to someone in my department if I happened to go into labor before I could administer them. A couple days later when I felt certain that I wasn't going to make any more changes, and I printed out the finals for all three of my classes and put them in an easy-to-describe location in my office. I didn't think any of this was necessary, but I also kept feeling that I needed to make sure I wasn't caught in the lurch in the very slim chance that the baby arrived sooner rather than later.

And yet I was still surprised by Miles' 6-week-early arrival. On the morning of April 22, with two finals given, one graded, and one yet to administer, I woke up around 4, wide awake and completely unable fall back asleep. I finally got up around 5, tested my blood sugar, sent off a couple emails, and then headed to the gym for my normal late-pregnancy workout. And then, as I was pulling out of the parking lot afterwards, my water broke. Brian and I had just attended the first session of a 4-week prenatal class at the hospital, and topics for the session had ranged from symptoms of late pregnancy to signs that you should go immediately to the hospital. Water breaking (particularly before 37 weeks) was one of those signs, but the instructor had assured us that in spite of what we may have seen in the movies, it is very rare for a woman's water to break before her labor is well under way. So my natural inclination was to assume something else was going on. Maybe I'd lost control of my bladder - that was also a symptom of late pregnancy. But it became clearer and clearer over the course of the drive that this was not late pregnancy incontinence, and I started feeling more and more anxious. When I pulled up to our house I jumped out of the car and ran into the apartment and called out to Brian, who also assumed it must be something else until he saw the trail of water leading from the car to our apartment door. Five minutes later, with a towel wrapped around my waist, at 34 weeks and 3 days, we were off to the hospital.

The time from there on out passed faster than I might have expected. We had planned for our son to be born at the very small Orem Community Hospital, but because I was 6 weeks early we were given the option to transfer to the much larger Utah Valley Regional Medical Center in the very likely event that our baby would need to be taken to the NICU. I had not wanted to give birth at UVRMC (which I'd heard was a bit of a baby factory), but even more than that, I did not want to be separated from my baby immediately after giving birth. The entire day then proceeded to unfold in ways that completely obliterated all my hopes and expectations about giving birth. No Orem Community Hospital, a different doctor (we actually went through four over the course of the day), no walking around, no sitting up, constant rather than intermittent monitoring, pitocin to speed the labor along rather than letting it progress naturally.

And then my 5:30 meltdown. Brian called the nurse, and the nurse called the anesthesiologist, who fiddled with my epidural. Then the nurse checked my cervix, and said, "Oh! No wonder you're in pain! You're dilated to a 9. The epidural's going to have a hard time keeping up with that." And all of a sudden the world starting looking a lot brighter. 9 meant I'd passed active labor and was in transition, and that pushing and delivery were right around the corner. The tweaking of the epidural worked to dull (but not eliminate) the pain, and I let myself relax into it, to feel the baby pushing down through the birth canal. By 7 we were in the operating room (where all preterm babies at UVRMC are delivered), and at 7:26 a baby was sliding out of me and we had our first purple, wrinkly view of the child who had been kicking inside me for so long.

Miles was whisked away. Brian followed, and I was not able to see him immediately. Neither of us was able to hold him until the next morning, and when we finally were, he was hooked up to as many lines and monitors as I had been during his birth.*

Just a few days before I unexpectedly went into labor, I was talking on the phone with a good friend who had had her first child almost 2 years ago. As we discussed labor, she told me something I had heard over and over again. "Don't have any expectations," she said. "It will happen the way it will happen." I wanted to dispute that, to say that while I was ready for expectations to be overturned I felt like it would be a good idea to at least know what decisions I might have to make, and what I might hope for in situations where I had a choice. But in the end, my expectations were all smashed to smithereens. And all our expectations about what it would be like to suddenly have a baby in our life have needed to be rethought, or at least put on hold. It's hard, hard, hard to have a baby in the NICU. Our life is dominated by pumping milk and visits to the hospital, and even after being unhooked from the IV and from oxygen, holding our baby involves maneuvering tubes and wires and blankets (and then he was put back on the oxygen, and then he was taken off, and then he was put back on...). We want him at home with us more than anything, and we are having to exercise great patience as we wait and watch him progress.

At the same time, we're incredibly grateful that if he was going to come prematurely, he waited until 34 weeks. We have seen tiny babies born far earlier than Miles whose parents worry about long-term complications, or even their child's survival. But in spite of his early, emotionally fraught, drawn-out, and super-expensive entry into the world, Miles will be just fine. We wish circumstances were different, but we are also coming to know and love our baby boy more every time we visit.

And now, because we're new parents, pictures :):

*The other night during one of my 1 1/2 hour "power pumping" sessions (for the purpose of getting my milk flowing more than it has been) Brian and I watched Dumbo, because he had cited a scene in one of his final projects. Both of us were a complete wreck during the "Baby Mine" scene. Mrs. Jumbo being torn away from her baby and only able to touch him from a distance, through the bars of her isolation cage, touched us just a little too close to home.